Boxee to offer cloud DVR service, over-the-air channels next month

A new set-top box and service offerings aim to make cable providers sweat.

Boxee plans to offer a new set-top box that will allow users to get over-the-air broadcast channels and access to a cloud DVR service, as reported by GigaOM Tuesday. The cloud DVR comes with a monthly fee, but will allow for unlimited storage space as it launches in a handful of cities next month.

The new box forgoes the XBMC platform used in older hardware in favor of a custom Linux-based operating system. The hardware itself is manufactured by D-Link, uses a Broadcom chip rather than the Intel chips in the old Boxee box, and looks like an unassuming black set-top box instead of Boxee's usual oddly shaped-polygon balancing on one of its corners.

For the new product and service set, Boxee is streamlining its app offerings down to an essential few, including Vimeo, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, and Vudu. The over-the-air service and apps appear to be launching without regional restrictions, but the DVR service will only be available in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington, DC at first, with more markets coming in 2013. Once shows are recorded, users can watch them on a TV or through an HTML5 Web application on a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

The new Boxee TV is priced at $99 and will be available starting November 1, while the cloud DVR service costs $15 per month. According to paidContent, this new setup means that the old Boxees will be put out to update pasture, with no future firmware updates planned.

Perhaps the OTA content is really OTA such as in a Silicon Dust tuner or various forms of DVB (T, S, S2). You can do this now on linux. Maybe even on Window with VLC (Videolan). It is a bit clumsy, but VLC has a command line interface that you can use with satellite receivers.

It definitely has a real tuner in it, claims so on the site, and apparently includes an antenna for OTA reception. I'd be curious as to what sort of antenna they are providing, as tuning in OTA content from indoor antennas isn't usually that easy to do unless you are close the transmission sites. DTV spec was written based on antennas being pole mounted at least 25 feet in the air, hence the trouble people have tuning it in indoors with rabbit ears.

776 posts | registered Dec 25, 1999

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

Where did the information on initial rollout markets come from? Is there a link? I'm curious whether "Washington DC" means the metro area including Northern Virginia, or the actual District of Columbia. Thanks.

Edit: Found the market information at the Boxee site, but they don't clarify what DC means either.

So first, the Boxee Box means the Boxee desktop app gets no more updates, then the Boxee TV means the Boxee Box gets no more updates.

Seriously, the Boxee team turned out to be quite a piece of work, didn't they? I don't know why anybody would buy their products at this point, knowing they'll be left high and dry when the next version comes out.

this new setup means that the old Boxees will be put out to update pasture, with no future firmware updates planned.

Not quote correct. According to their own blog post on the topic, they will release one more major update, and then it will go into maintenance mode, which I think means they will fix any outstanding issues.

Perhaps the OTA content is really OTA such as in a Silicon Dust tuner or various forms of DVB (T, S, S2). You can do this now on linux. Maybe even on Window with VLC (Videolan). It is a bit clumsy, but VLC has a command line interface that you can use with satellite receivers.

So first, the Boxee Box means the Boxee desktop app gets no more updates, then the Boxee TV means the Boxee Box gets no more updates.

Seriously, the Boxee team turned out to be quite a piece of work, didn't they? I don't know why anybody would buy their products at this point, knowing they'll be left high and dry when the next version comes out.

I used Boxee desktop almost daily when it was pre 1.0 on my linux HTPC. Once they dropped support for the desktop version and released a completely broken 1.5 for linux I went back to XBMC and was much happier for it.

They have yet to release a box that will let me do everything I can do with a PC I built in 2004.

I've gone to the website and looked at the setup, and I'm trying to figure out how they will be able to upload the content to the cloud in any kind of reasonable time frame, even using 720P and MPEG4 or similar encoding. Most home connections barely have 1 megabit upload for bandwidth. I assume it must have some storage in it for buffering the recordings while uploading? Tie that with $15 a month for the service, so $180 a year, and that's just for the content you recorded, unless they are throwing in some other perks?

I use media center on my main Win 7 box at home with a hauppage dual tuner card to handle my DVR needs and use my Xbox for playback on my TV. While more expensive overall, so its not really a fair comparison, it records two shows at a time, and storage is cheap enough that I'm not having to hurry and watch something for fear of running out of space. I am not really sure how efficient media center is at recording, but HD programs usually eat about 5 gigs of space for an hour. Even if you cut that in half, the average home connection can barely upload a gig an hour, while nothing else is being done.

I have to say I'm puzzled as to how they can make it work and maintain quality?

Perhaps the OTA content is really OTA such as in a Silicon Dust tuner or various forms of DVB (T, S, S2). You can do this now on linux. Maybe even on Window with VLC (Videolan). It is a bit clumsy, but VLC has a command line interface that you can use with satellite receivers.

It definitely has a real tuner in it, claims so on the site, and apparently includes an antenna for OTA reception. I'd be curious as to what sort of antenna they are providing, as tuning in OTA content from indoor antennas isn't usually that easy to do unless you are close the transmission sites. DTV spec was written based on antennas being pole mounted at least 25 feet in the air, hence the trouble people have tuning it in indoors with rabbit ears.

this new setup means that the old Boxees will be put out to update pasture, with no future firmware updates planned.

Not quote correct. According to their own blog post on the topic, they will release one more major update, and then it will go into maintenance mode, which I think means they will fix any outstanding issues.

Yeah... that's what they said about the desktop app, too. Turned out the "major update" disabled "premium services" like Pandora and Netflix, and there were no maintenance updates afterwards

OTA HD is ~20mbit. Most people don't have 20mbit up, how is the cloud dvr supposed to make any sense?

With the regional restrictions i wonder if they're negotiating deals with the content providers and never bother to actually upload what you "record" locally.

Perhaps content providers need to be the egg to the chicken and egg problem. Create a need and push a demand.

I seem to remember gaming having a similar effect on broadband speeds in the early 2000's.

yea that didn't work out too well did it? netlfix hulu and iphone came to the market, we got speed but we also got data caps. whats the point of the speed if you can use your entire allotment in a day (LTE)

considering verizon is junking dsl and pushing LTE, we are going backwards in my opinion not forward at all. i refuse to pay 100 bucks for internet then have to worry I'm going over..

The article states that it's an Intel chipset, this is not the case the Gigaom article states they are using a Broadcom chipset which is likely Arm based.

The original Boxee device used an Intel chipset which was a huge source of problems.

The Boxee Box 1 was like a beta test, this Boxee 2 STB sounds a much more limited and focused product, maybe it will be more polished as a result. There are certainly a large number of angry Boxee Box users on their forums who wont be happy regardless.

OTA HD is ~20mbit. Most people don't have 20mbit up, how is the cloud dvr supposed to make any sense?

With the regional restrictions i wonder if they're negotiating deals with the content providers and never bother to actually upload what you "record" locally.

Perhaps content providers need to be the egg to the chicken and egg problem. Create a need and push a demand.

I seem to remember gaming having a similar effect on broadband speeds in the early 2000's.

yea that didn't work out too well did it? netlfix hulu and iphone came to the market, we got speed but we also got data caps. whats the point of the speed if you can use your entire allotment in a day (LTE)

considering verizon is junking dsl and pushing LTE, we are going backwards in my opinion not forward at all. i refuse to pay 100 bucks for internet then have to worry I'm going over..

As far as actual speeds I think it's worked out well. At least in my state (Michigan).

Currently at 30Mbps with Charter for $40/m. Comcast and ATT also serve my area both Comcast and Charter offering 100Mbps.

East coast has better internet offerings than the west though. So I could see how many would have issues.

This is kind of a disappointing announcement for me, because the new Boxee product isn't an actual upgrade, in a lot of ways. Maybe I shouldn't expect new products to be a superset of the previous offerings, even when the old box is being discontinued, but I (and apparently a lot of current Boxee users) use the current device for local content a significant portion of the time, especially as the online services have slowly been deprecated or discontinued. If I wanted to get this device, I'd also have to get a second *something* for the terabyte+ of local content I have as well, and I'm sure as hell not going back to having a dozen boxes attached to my TV. I wish them luck, but as a current Boxee owner, I don't have the slightest interest in this.

Since Boxee has a cooperative deal with the cable companies, it's not difficult to guess why local storage has been removed, the cable companies probably demanded it.

It's hard to see this being a success without the ability to play locally acquired and stored video. While its true that average TV viewers may not see local storage as a make or break feature, they aren't the evangelists for devices like this.

The early adopters who signal whether a new device is worthwhile won't give this Boxee second look without a robust ability to handle locally acquired and stored content. Cheap Chinese Android-based ARM boxes with equal or greater features at lower prices are going to own this market. Boxee has just delivered another market failure.

I wonder if they can partner with a TV manufacturer and offer this built in? Might work out better then another stand alone box, and allow a company to use it to stand out? Similar to Panasonic Vieracast but with a recording function? Buy TV, plug in antenna and network, and its done, pay hulu, netflix, boxee, which would still be less than cable, with access to a lot of content.

Most of these boxes still lack ability to handle local content though, or easily, and that is a problem, I can see why current owners of Boxee box would not like it.

Boxee has lost a lot of good will with me over recent years. I'm a Boxee Box owner, but I was very dissappointed when they discontinued the desktop app. Boxee Box used to be a unique set top box that had a lot of promise because Boxee was willing to go their own way and put in a browser to access Hulu and other sites. But when those sites were blocked by the content providers Boxee didn't do anything about it. On top of that the Boxee Box isn't even that stable and has a lot of bugs. It's still a decent box but its starting to age.

My one reason for holding out hope for Boxee was that they used XBMC and I thought that maybe they would contribute to that project (I'm not sure if they ever did). Now that they're moving away from XBMC I have no reason left to support Boxee. This new box sounds useless to me and much to expensive with the monthly fee.

Good riddance Boxee, I will be going back to XBMC or some other variant like Plex the next time I'm in the market for a new box.

OTA HD is ~20mbit. Most people don't have 20mbit up, how is the cloud dvr supposed to make any sense?

With the regional restrictions i wonder if they're negotiating deals with the content providers and never bother to actually upload what you "record" locally.

No; that's pretty much against the rules of all the content agreements these providers have. The way it works is that the cable companies can only have rights to deliver the content over their cable networks; but the customer can purchase a device and do whatever they please with it after the connection is terminated. Ars had a good article about why this system is so screwed up about a month back.

What's more likely is that Boxee is compressing the video on-the-fly and uploading it as it records. The device probably also has a limited amount of flash storage for buffering. They're certainly not pushing a 20 Mbit OTA stream over the internet.

Perhaps the OTA content is really OTA such as in a Silicon Dust tuner or various forms of DVB (T, S, S2). You can do this now on linux. Maybe even on Window with VLC (Videolan). It is a bit clumsy, but VLC has a command line interface that you can use with satellite receivers.

It definitely has a real tuner in it, claims so on the site, and apparently includes an antenna for OTA reception. I'd be curious as to what sort of antenna they are providing, as tuning in OTA content from indoor antennas isn't usually that easy to do unless you are close the transmission sites. DTV spec was written based on antennas being pole mounted at least 25 feet in the air, hence the trouble people have tuning it in indoors with rabbit ears.

From another article, the included antenna is incredibly small, just a very simple telescoping antenna that is no more than a couple feet in length. I cannot imagine that it is very reliable.

But I have a suspicion that no shows will be uploaded anyways. Based on the regional restrictions of the DVR service, which is absurd out of context, I can only assume that Boxee is merely using the antenna to verify that you have a signal, and could record a show. Then, through an agreement with your local service providers (cable, DTV, what-have-you), they give you access to an online copy of that channel at the times indicated as "recorded". That would address the incredibly limiting upload speeds most users face, as well potentially signal issues. It could potentially be a win-win for everyone involved too. Users get the content they want, Boxee gets subscribers, and service providers get viewers who likely cannot easily skip commercials embedded in the "recordings".

Since Boxee has a cooperative deal with the cable companies, it's not difficult to guess why local storage has been removed, the cable companies probably demanded it.

No; it was likely a decision made to keep the cost of the device low.

Nope. The cost of allowing local content is negligible, perhaps zero. It has the decoding and display hardware, the only other requirement would be a very inexpensive external data port. Evidence suggests this Boxee actually has just such a data port. Taking a look at the ports on the back - they sure look like a pair of USB ports.

If those USB ports can copy data (and really, what else can they be for?) this Boxee has the technical capability to play local content. Boxee's software can already handle local content. The display and decoding hardware can certainly handle local content. The only additional hardware required would be a data port, and it seems to have two.

There is no additional cost.

No, the inability to play local content clearly seems to have been a "business decision", not a technical or cost decision.

I'm a bit confused as to what would be the advantage of a Boxee-TV compared to say, a Dreambox, besides the price? Or is there nothing like Dreambox in US and that's what makes them think this will work, despite the whole 'cloud storage' stuff?And how hard would it be for them to simply stuff a hard drive into it, or at least make it possible for the end user to put one in it?

OTA HD is ~20mbit. Most people don't have 20mbit up, how is the cloud dvr supposed to make any sense?

With the regional restrictions i wonder if they're negotiating deals with the content providers and never bother to actually upload what you "record" locally.

If they didn't have any sub channels it's about 18.9 Mb/sec. But to be fair it's that high because ATSC spec only allows for MPEG-2 encoding. If you look at Cable and satellite you're seeing HD channels with Bitrates between 2-4Mb using modern encoding. There is a question of if/how they would accomplish the transcoding without some purpose made silicon.

Making deals with content providers seems like a good avenue, however, Boxee isn't exactly on good terms with many of the large content providers. So I'm scratching my head a bit.

The more interesting thing not covered in the story is Boxee's deal with Comcast to get basic tier channel (which are going to encrypted QAM) delivered via DNLA. Though that's still yet to be scene.

Since Boxee has a cooperative deal with the cable companies, it's not difficult to guess why local storage has been removed, the cable companies probably demanded it.

It's hard to see this being a success without the ability to play locally acquired and stored video. While its true that average TV viewers may not see local storage as a make or break feature, they aren't the evangelists for devices like this.

The early adopters who signal whether a new device is worthwhile won't give this Boxee second look without a robust ability to handle locally acquired and stored content. Cheap Chinese Android-based ARM boxes with equal or greater features at lower prices are going to own this market. Boxee has just delivered another market failure.

Agreed. I cut the cable subscription years ago and do fine with Netflix and BluRay/DVD. I now have an actual TV after using a HTPC for years and while I wouldn't mind a standalone OTA DVR, I won't be paying for a subscription to get it. I haven't bothered with MythTV or any more current (if any) equivalents because, frankly, it just isn't that big a deal for me. If someone like Boxee would make an OTA only standalone DVR that doesn't need a subscription, I suspect they'd sell quite well among folks like me for things like the Olympics, etc.

If someone like Boxee would make an OTA only standalone DVR that doesn't need a subscription, I suspect they'd sell quite well among folks like me for things like the Olympics, etc.

Well, according to the article this Boxee DVR requires a $15/mo subscription, so it looks like you'll have to keep waiting.

I too ditched cable a year ago. I'm fortunate that I can receive all the local channels with a cheap indoor antenna all in glorious HD quality. I broke down though and bought a Tivo and thus pay $15/mo myself for their guide data. While I am paying $15/mo it's still a lot cheaper than what I was paying Time Warner for cable TV service.

OTA HD is ~20mbit. Most people don't have 20mbit up, how is the cloud dvr supposed to make any sense?

With the regional restrictions i wonder if they're negotiating deals with the content providers and never bother to actually upload what you "record" locally.

Even if they had a substantial internal storage buffer in the box, it seems like they'd run into trouble if the user tried to record too many things in a row.

It's unlikely that the box has the computing power to re-compress shows to take less space (and there would likely be quality problems).

So the most likely explanation is that they are not uploading the shows, or at least not uploading all of the bits. So it seems like it will have to work something like Apple's Match service for music. Perhaps Boxee records a reference for each show, breaks it up into checksummed blocks, and the user's box only uploads differences. Or each user watching a show could upload a small fraction of it. I don't know whether this is legal--a case could be made that each user needs to upload his own bits, identical or not--put perhaps Boxee could pay the local broadcaster a sweetener for permission to allow this, much as Apple does for its Match service.

By the way, I notice an interesting omission in the announcement that might relate to bandwidth constraints. It says that it has two tuners, so that you can watch a show while recording another--but it does not say that you can record two shows simultaneously.

I doubt if complaints from owners of the previous Boxee box will carry much weight. There are always some people who think buying a product entitles them to get all of the features from future versions of the product in perpetuity, but most people have sense enough to understand that this is not always possible.. Apple ran into similar complaints when it released the second version of AppleTV as a streaming-only platform. But if new version sells so poorly that adoption by the minority of previous Boxee owners is critical, then it's probably doomed, anyway.

Of course, if it does fail to sell well, users will probably have to eventually say "bye-bye" to whatever shows they have in their save unlimited cloud storage.

If someone like Boxee would make an OTA only standalone DVR that doesn't need a subscription, I suspect they'd sell quite well among folks like me for things like the Olympics, etc.

Well, according to the article this Boxee DVR requires a $15/mo subscription, so it looks like you'll have to keep waiting.

I saw that. All too many tech companies want the infinite money that is a subscription these days. They ignore, or simply neglect, the folks like me who actually wouldn't mind paying a few hundred bucks for a decent STB.

Quote:

I too ditched cable a year ago. I'm fortunate that I can receive all the local channels with a cheap indoor antenna all in glorious HD quality. I broke down though and bought a Tivo and thus pay $15/mo myself for their guide data. While I am paying $15/mo it's still a lot cheaper than what I was paying Time Warner for cable TV service.

I considered that when I first dropped cable, since at that point I had a 120 hour TiVo Series 2. I just don't watch enough TV to really make it worthwhile. YMMV, obviously.

this new setup means that the old Boxees will be put out to update pasture, with no future firmware updates planned.

Not quote correct. According to their own blog post on the topic, they will release one more major update, and then it will go into maintenance mode, which I think means they will fix any outstanding issues.

They can't even fix the outstanding issues with the Boxee Box as they exist now. I've been watching several of their bugs in their Jira bug tracker go unassigned for months. I will never buy anything from them again.